This edition covers fresh data on student AI use and ChatGPT’s new Socratic Study Mode, NotebookLM’s new multilingual audio and video overviews, Adobe’s Firefly-powered Photoshop upgrades, content licensing deals from Gannett/Perplexity and Johns Hopkins University Press with benchmark pricing for academic books, Neil Perkin on where AI still falls short, fresh research on the scale of “Shadow AI” use in workplaces, and Ethan Mollick on the “Bitter Lesson” and outcome-trained AI in messy organisations.

It’s been a significant week of contrasting AI developments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the administration moved swiftly toward a more deregulated environment, signalling its preference for Silicon Valley-friendly policies on AI training and licensing. Europe, meanwhile, saw new releases emphasising transparency, environmental responsibility and public benefit, underlining a growing divergence in approaches and creating important challenges and opportunities for global publishers.

This edition covers ChatGPT’s new Agent mode and what it could automate for publishers, Matt Webb on governance lessons from Anthropic’s vending-machine experiment, a WeTransfer terms-of-service flap, NotebookLM’s new pre-curated notebooks of licensed and public-domain content, Dave Morris on AI in his writing practice, Anthropic’s Claude for Education partnerships, Condé Nast and Hearst signing Amazon Rufus licensing deals, the launch of Latam-GPT, and research on how AI is shaping the words we use.

This edition covers Doug Shapiro’s media-trends slide deck and the questions it poses for any creative business, fresh Cambridge University Press polling on public support for AI training payments, an EU antitrust complaint against Google’s AI Overviews and grim data on news click-throughs, OpenAI and partners providing AI training to 400,000 US teachers, hidden prompts being inserted in academic papers to game AI reviewers, Bloomberg on the “tiny teams” era and Anthropic’s Project Vend experiment as a counterpoint, and research showing managers using AI to make decisions about their direct reports.

Happy Friday—though I’m writing this the day before on the way back from a great day at the Publishers Licensing Services Conference in London. The agenda and other speakers were superb, offering plenty of food for thought. It was also great to meet Helen King, whose PubTech Radar newsletter I’ve really enjoyed recently (do sign up for it!) Connecting with Helen via Bluesky commentary on the conference felt nostalgically like the Twitter backchannel at publishing events in the early 2010s. Thanks to PLS and the IPG for the invitation to speak.

It’s been a really significant week for legal developments: while the newsletter has more of a copyright focus than usual, the courtroom updates are balanced with some really interesting technical developments from Creative Commons, Anthropic and others (skip down if you’re less interested in the legalities). It points to the fact that, however long a road to a settled legal and licensing position, there are immediate practical uses for AI in publishing.

This edition covers Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s bullish AI update and what billions of agents mean for supplier teams, Turing Institute/LEGO research on how children and teachers are using generative AI, a PLS consultation on licensing for AI training, new image-generation tools from Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT’s new Record mode on Mac, Reddit’s Community Intelligence product, a New Yorker piece on what AI is doing to reading, and the resignation of UK PM AI Adviser Matt Clifford.

It’s Friday 13th. Unlucky for AI image platform Midjourney, which is about to find out why “don’t mess with The Mouse” (or an earthier paraphrase) is a popular aphorism in media law. Luckier for publishers, with some powerful new tools this week: in particular, Google’s Deep Research could be a game changer for production of ancillary content.